Cumplesemanas

Our baby has a breathing problem. On the inhale, he sounds like a large-bore two stroke motor with a leaky piston. On the exhale, he sounds like a galley of pit-vipers hissing disapproval. He'll go on like this for a minute, then switch modes, passing through phases of low moans and plaintive yelps, long groans and spastic gagging, then clucks, a few sighs, a high, piercing shriek, followed by six seconds of total silence: listen, it's terrifying. Perhaps these patterns are normal. The Dr. Sears Baby Book says that 'newborns don't breath like adults.' Maybe true. Still, how do I know? Since he only makes these sounds when he's sleeping, and he'll never sleep for the pediatrician, medical science can't reassure me. And in the absence of a medical opinion, how can I sleep through the night? Watching this boy breath is like observing a drunken high-wire artist lunge and sway wildly at 100 feet with no nets. Only my constant, waking vigilance keeps him up there, keeps the balance pole swinging, the diaphragm contracting, the air coursing through those tiny, overlabored lungs. The minute I doze off, he's a goner.

Benjamin turns three weeks today. Already, he is vastly different from the comic assemblage of cheek that emerged from the womb. His skin is bad. He has had low grade infant acne on his left cheek for over a week, and a pretty red ring around the part of his leg where Dappy Pants touch flesh. During his second week he had some sort of horrible white flakiness on both his hands and his feet, but this seems to have passed with time and worry (no, the pediatric triage nurse assures us, he does not have childhood leprosy.) He also has the look of an old man, with a wrinkled forehead, evil pig eyes, and receding temples. And he is fat in ways I can only dream of being, huge sumo-wrestler legs from which great bags of skin hang flaccid and lifeless, bulging breasts, a distended belly, a bulldog neck, thick robo-killer arms that flail madly when he's hungry or sleepy or wants to be held. At his two week checkup he weighed 11.5 pounds, apparently a gain of such Goliath dimensions that our lactation consultant basically said she had nothing more to tell us, Benjamin seemed to know what to do quiet well enough without her input. Yesterday he weighed in at 12.6 pounds. What a monster. We are thinking about hiring the boy off to a traveling freak show to help pay the rent.

But he is more than just monstrously large. He is also becoming monstrously loud. At three weeks, Benjamusco shows an undeniable upsurge in his tendency to wail, at any provocation: wet diaper, tight sling, touchy tummy, or wrong radio station, it doesn't seem to matter, his response is always the same, a violent, wall-crumbling, lung-rending wail. Even his silences are raked with a low-grade snuffling sound, a kind of pilot-gripe that burns low and steady. And while every book we've read or parent we've talked to assures us this is par for the course, it provides us with almost limitless opportunity to worry.

Suddenly, Benjamin's entire career as a human being, from his fourth grade achievement tests to his performance on the high school track team to his SAT scores to his first job as CEO of a restructured mortgage securities firm, all this depends critically on whether we give him a pacifier this week or next. Why? Well, apparently, some babies take such a shine to these chupos that they renounce the breast for ever, meaning they need to be fed formula, with it's attendant expense and IQ drop and sordid implications for long term loveability, and though the incidence of this might be rare, the American Pediatrics Association recommends waiting until the child is at least a month before introducing any artificial sucking device. "Suelta los chupos!" shouts the mother-in-law, waving a pacifier at Benjamin with manic, diabolical laughter, "a las quatro semanas!," we respond, barricading the boy with our bodies.

And so it goes. Is his horrible breathing a sign of cat allergies? Is his diaper rash going to respond to A&D ointment? Why is he crying, anyway? Maybe he's got gas. But that means mom is producing too much milk, leaving him saturated on the watery front stuff and letting the good, rich, fatty hind product languish at the bottom of the mammary. Oh my God, what do we do? Quick, let's pump it off into bottles, we can freeze it and give it to our friends as a Christmas gift. But hang on, if we do that, Catalina's body will produce even more, and then it's a long, sordid cycle of overproduction, under consumption, and the doomed attempt to get supply in step with demand, which, under the circumstances, can only lead to shrivelled paps, scrawny spawn, bottle feeding, death and ruin.

My mom warned me about this. "Welcome to worry," she told us when she heard about the birth, "it will dog your tracks for the rest of your life." How could she have known?